Early Expansion Question
 

For Multi-player, what is a good amount of provinces to have at the beginging of the second year, after 12 turns?

7 Provinces? 10 Provinces? 14 Provinces?

This is without an expansion pretender or dual/triple bless.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

Totally depends on how your start is/what nation/strategy etc you are aiming for. As a rule of thumb, I discard any strategy that don't give me atleast 10 provinces at turn 10. So I guess the answer to your question is 12+ is an acceptable number of provinces at that point. With some nation you can look at 25+ if you are doing good.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

Yea, I agree completely with Evilhomer.

You should look to take a minium of 1/per turn in your 1st year. Anymore is a bonus.

There are some exceptions, such as Caelum with its mammoths and any nation with elephants. Those should look to expand at least twice as fast, ie 24'ish provinces by turn 12.

When taking a dual bless or starting with a awake combat pretender you should look for similar number of provinces ie...24 by turn 12.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

It depends on where on map you are, how many provinces per player on map, and how soon you want to fight. And of course, on graphs on/off :-)

If you are in middle of map, with six neighbors, and have three times as much provinces, because of a super fighting non-flying pretender... you may be in trouble.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

I'm partial to always expanding as fast as possible and usually base my strategy/build around taking 2/turn by turn 4 and hopefully 3/turn by turn 7.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

Do you guys normally take a province on the first turn before seeing what's there? If you lost that would pretty much be a death sentence in MP wouldn't it? I only ask because one time the province next to my capital happened to have 3 dark vines and 3 bloodhenge druids along with 50 chaff, and blindly walking into that would be a very bad start.

I know it's very nation specific, but I don't see how some nations can support expansion like that. MA C'tis for example has relatively underpowered national units and a bless strategy isn't viable there. What kind of expansion technique would work for them? I normally recruit the elite lizard warriors, but I lose a few every battle and eventually I have to combine two armies into one. I've never been able to expand quickly with nations like that.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

Typically I won't attack on the first turn unless I have an awesome, unbeatable pretender. You are right in that losing your inital army or *gasp* your pretender is very bad on turn 1.

This is just personal preference on my part - I'm sure others disagree - but if the nation sucks (no bless - no easy way to quickly expand) in the early game I'll almost always take a pretender that can help with the expansion.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

Ok, so my Patala strategy is a little slow. This is bad because someone is going to be really mad if you take a province they have claimed, even if you can just slaughter their army. Need to claim quickly. Ok.

It kind of looks like, on a 15 province per person map, that by the end of the first year you are going to have contact on all fronts?

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

Usually - yep.

Re: Early Expansion Question
 

How do players maintain an expansion rate of 2+ provinces per turn early in the game? With the initial limitations of resources and gold, I typically don't have what I consider a reasonable beginning army until turn 3 or so. Plus, I often recruit a leader suitable for prophethood on turn one, raise him on turn two, and then he's ready to go with my first army on turn three. At that point you have no other troops and it will take another 3-5 turns to get a second force big enough to attack indies.

Bottom line, I don't see how you can have 12+ provinces on turn 12 without an awake SC pretender, or elephants.

Here's a related question. How would MA Shinumaya have the most provinces, about 7 turns into a giant MP game? Aren't their basic goblin troops just fast dying chaff? Isn't that too early to have their good summoned troops going?